Logging in Tasmania’s Tarkine region. Australia pays farmers to keep native trees, while paying loggers to cut these vital carbon sinks down.Logging in Tasmania’s Tarkine region. Australia pays farmers to keep native trees, while paying loggers to cut these vital carbon sinks down.Last modified on Tue 12 Jul 2022 18.31 BSThe climate crisis often gets blamed on market failure, but government failure plays a pretty big role as well.
, the really inconvenient truth is the most effective CCS technology is the humble tree. It’s low cost, low risk and ready to roll. Trees quite literally suck carbon dioxide out of the air and store it safely in their trunks and their roots. And as if that’s not a cool invention, trees throw in water filtration and native species habitat “services” for free. If Elon Musk had invented the tree, he’d be a trillionaire by now.
Most of the trees from native forests logging get turned into woodchips to make paper. But while there are lots of substitutes for native forest woodchips, there is no substitute for our remaining native forest habitats which are literally the only places on earth that countless species can live. And those same forests are the only places on earth that can filter and purify the water that runs into the dams that provide most of our drinking water.
The former and current federal governments have committed up to $4.5bn to encourage some farmers to “avoid deforestation” and “induce regeneration” of trees on their land. But while preventing further land clearing and encouraging better land management is a great idea, there is